Greenwashing is usually understood to entail the promotion of a product, practice or service as green when it is not. The practice continues to be a significant barrier to environmental action especially in relation to climate change. But what exactly is the wrongness of greenwashing and what, precisely is greenwashing?
What’s wrong with greenwashing might seem obvious - greenwashing is a form of deception or perhaps manipulation leading, potentially, to some form of harmful consequence. While all of these things do occur with the practice of greenwashing, the full picture of why greenwashing is wrong is far more complex. Deception certainly picks out an objectional feature in the act of greenwashing. But definitions that focus on this element also miss something that is importantly wrong about the greenwashing. Greenwashing typically doesn’t just deceive, it deceives in order to derive an advantage (financial, reputational) from a deceptive practice. In this sense greenwashing is also wrong because it involves exploitation.
In this paper I’ll argue that typical accounts of the wrongness of greenwashing are usually too narrow. Most accounts that associate deception with greenwashing neglect the other ways in which greenwashing can be wrongful. Accounts that do identify multiple ways in which greenwashing is wrong favour some ways over others without justification. Conversely, some definitions of greenwashing are too broad in that they include implausible instances of greenwashing.
The paper will also argue that conceptions of harm employed in discussing greenwashing also miss significant indirect contributions to harm. The paper will thus present a set of theoretical tools that can better address justice concerns in respect of complex climate and environmental public policy issues.
